Hasta La Gadget!

In the seemingly perpetual battle to rid this planet of cancer, a team of neurosurgeons from Washington University are using a new MRI-guided high-intensity laser probe to “cook” brain tumors that would otherwise be completely inoperable. According to Dr. Eric C. Leuthardt, this procedure “offers hope to certain patients who had few or no options before,” with the laser baking the cancer cells deep within the brain while leaving the good tissue around it unmarred. The best part, however, is that this is already moving beyond the laboratory, with a pair of doctors at Barnes-Jewish Hospital using it successfully on a patient last month. Regrettably, just three hospitals at the moment are equipped with the Monteris AutoLITT device, but if we know anything about anything related to lasers, it’ll be everywhere in no time flat.

Neurosurgeons use MRI-guided lasers to ‘cook’ brain tumors originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Oct 2010 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We don’t really expect that the actual Tron movie will be any good, but boy, its officially endorsed accessories aren’t looking half bad. The $100 laser mouse from Razer has snuck out for a quick pre-release video demo where we get to see it tracking gloriously on an accompanying “precision” mousepad. There’s hardly much to be learnt about the mouse’s ergonomics or 5600dpi accuracy, but it does glow with that mighty inviting shade of blue (cyan?) and the mousepad reacts to the laser’s illumination by leaving dreamy light trails after your movements. It’s cyber-poetry in motion, available after the break.

Continue reading Razer Tron Mouse leaves light trails in our hearts (video)

Razer Tron Mouse leaves light trails in our hearts (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Sep 2010 23:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lasers. Is there anything they can’t do? The latest addition to the 50-year-old technology’s bag of tricks comes courtesy of a team of researchers from the Australian National University, who’ve managed to create a laser beam that effectively functions as a tiny tractor beam. The key, it seems, is that the laser beam is hollow, which allows tiny particles to be trapped in what the researchers describe as a “dark core,” which in turn causes the particles to be pushed along the beam by an effect known as the “photophoretic force.” As you might expect, that only works on very tiny particles, but the researchers are able to move them as far as one and a half meters, and they say that the technology could have a number of practical applications, including directing and clustering nano-particles in the air, and even transporting dangerous substances and microbes — in small amounts, of course.

[Thanks, Lester]

Australian researchers trap tiny particles in tiny tractor beam originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 22:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Laser power specialists Lasermotive has recently demonstrated the ability to keep a flying vehicle powered for up to two hours via a laser beam as its only power source.

Aside from keeping helicopters whirring about, this remote laser power tech has several interesting theoretical applications. Since it can send power infrastructure-free to remote locations, it could bring electricity to rural or underdeveloped communities around the world. It could also be used to aid exploration in hazardous locales–both on and off of the planet.

On a related sidenote, the other day I lamented that NASA had completely run out of ideas as far as getting into space and was just wasting taxpayer money with big stupid rockets.

Apparently I was wrong–NASA is seriously getting behind the idea of space elevators, and it looks like this sort of laser-energy transfer might be a key ingredient.

Sorry for doubting you, NASA. We cool? Don’t send any laser helicopters to come after me.

A corporate propaganda video goes into some of the tech deets after the jump.

Forget old and busted X-rays, T-rays are the future, man! It was only recently that we were discussing Terahertz lasers and their potential to see through paper, clothes, plastic, flesh, and other materials, but that discourse had to end on the sad note that nobody had managed to make them usable in a practical and economically feasible way. The major hurdle to overcome was the diffusion of Terahertz radiation — which results in weak, unfocused lasers — but now researchers from the universities of Harvard and Leeds seem to believe they’ve managed to do it. Using metamaterials to collimate T-rays into a “tightly bound, high powered beam” will, they claim, permit semiconductor lasers (i.e. the affordable kind) to perform the duties currently set aside for sophisticated machinery costing upwards of $160,000. Harvard has already filed a patent application for this innovation, and if things pan out, we might be seeing body scanners (both for medical and security purposes), manufacturing quality checks, and a bunch of other things using the extra special THz stuff to do their work.

Metamaterials used to focus Terahertz lasers, make them useful originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Aug 2010 11:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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